Where do the crypto whales hang out?

By Leo Zhang

Aug 2, 2018

Exchanges are growing steadily larger, but the security of their infrastructure (and their trading volumes) are still eclipsed by exchanges in traditional markets. In order for the whales of the cryptocurrency world to get a good price and stay under the radar, they have to pursue transactions "offline," through OTC trading desks.

"This week, TABB Group claimed that the OTC market of bitcoin is at least two to three times larger than exchange market. Given that the bitcoin exchange market processes around $4 billion worth of trades per day, if the TABB’s assessment is accurate, the OTC market of bitcoin is processing more than $12 billion worth of trades on a daily basis."

Technical Updates

"Counterfactual is an open-source project that is tackling this problem head on. Our goal is to make it easy for developers to build their applications using state channels on ethereum. You can read more about the goals of the project on our website, and check out the code on our github."

News & Commentary

"Canaan has also debuted the Avalon Miner A9, which provides a hashrate of up to 30 TH/s, with a power consumption of 1,720 watts per unit, according to Canaan's website. The price of the new miner has not yet been disclosed on the website."

"To be sure, some brokerages and money managers have reported their involvement to regulators and have asked for guidance to ensure they’re complying with the law. Others have been less forthcoming, and the regulatory landscape is complicated by legal wrangling over which assets should be considered securities under the SEC’s jurisdiction."

"Market narratives are the set of beliefs that investors use to explain market behavior and explain their actions. For example, right now, there is a market narrative that states that if the SEC approves a Bitcoin ETF, it will trigger a significant influx of institutional investment. Further, because there is a CBOE-backed proposal floating around, it is more likely than ever to happen in the coming weeks. With that ETF decision expected by August 10th, many are pointing to this particular market narrative as explaining last week’s market gains."